Computer Memory

Organization

USB flash drive

USB flash drive
A USB flash drive consists of a
flash memory data storage device
integrated with a USB ( Universal Serial
Bus ) interface .
USB flash drives are typically removable
and rewritable , and physically much
smaller than a floppy disk.
Most weigh less than 30 g & Storage
capacities in 2010 can be as large as
256 GB with steady improvements in size
and price per capacity expected .
USB Flash drives use the
USB mass storage standard , supported
natively by modern operating systems
such as Linux, Windows, and other
Unix - like systems .
1 Technology
2 History
3 Design and implementation
4 Fake products
5 Uses
6 Advantages and disadvantages
7 Comparison with other portable
storage

Technology
Flash memory combines a number of older
technologies , with lower cost , lower
power consumption and small size made
possible by advances in microprocessor
technology
The memory storage was based on earlier
EPROM and EEPROM technologies
These had very limited capacity , were
very slow for both reading and writing
Serial access requires far fewer
electrical connections for the memory
chips than does parallel access, which
has simplified the manufacture of
multi - gigabyte drives .
History
First commercial product

Trek Technology and IBM began selling

the first USB flash drives
commercially in 2000 .
The Singaporean Trek Technology sold a
model under the brand name
" ThumbDrive ", and IBM marketed the
first such drives in North America
with its product named the " DiskOnKey "
which was developed and manufactured
by the Israeli company M - Systems
IBM's USB flash drive became available
on December 15 , 2000 , and had a storage
capacity of 8 MB, more than five times
the capacity of the then - common
floppy disks.
 First commercial product

Both Trek Technology and Netac

Technology have tried to protect
their patent claims .
Trek won a Singaporean suit , but a
court in the United Kingdom
revoked one of Trek's UK patents .
While Netac Technology has brought
lawsuits against PNY Technologies,
Lenovo, aigo, Sony, and Taiwan's
Acer and Tai Guen Enterprise Co ,
most companies that manufacture
USB flash drives do so without
regard for Trek and Netac's
patents .
Second generation

Modern flash drives have USB 2 . 0

connectivity .
they do not currently use the full 480 
Mbit/ s ( 60MB / s ) which the USB 2 . 0 Hi -
Speed specification supports because of
technical limitations inherent in NAND
flash .
File transfer speeds vary considerably
and should be checked before purchase .
Speeds may be given in Mbyte per
second , Mbit per second or optical
drive multipliers such as " 180X " ( 180
times 150 KiB per second ).
Typical fast drives claim to read at up
to 30 megabytes / s ( MB / s ) and write at
about half that speed .
Design and implementation

Essential components
Additional components
Size and style of packaging
File system
Longevity
l
Design and implementation

l One end of the device is fitted with a

single type - A USB connector.
l Inside the plastic casing is a small
printed circuit board .
l Mounted on this board is some power
circuitry and a small number of
surface - mounted integrated circuits ( ICs ).
l Typically , one of these ICs provides an
interface to the USB port , another drives
the onboard memory , and the other is the
flash memory.
Internals of a typical USB
flash drive

1 USB connector
2 USB mass storage

controller device
3 Test points

4 Flash memory chip

5 Crystal oscillator

6 LED

7 Write - protect

switch ( Optional )
8 Space for second

flash memory chip

 Essential components

There are typically four parts to a flash



drive :
Male type - A USB connector – provides a
physical interface to the host computer .
USB mass storage controller – implements
the USB host controller . The controller
contains a small microcontroller with a
small amount of on - chip ROM and RAM.
NAND flash memory chip – stores data . NAND
flash is typically also used in
digital cameras.
Crystal oscillator – produces the device's
main 12 MHz clock signal and controls
the device's data output through a
phase - locked loop.
Additional components

Jumpers and test pins – for testing

during the flash drive's manufacturing
or loading code into the
microprocessor .
LEDs – indicate data transfers or data
reads and writes .
Write - protect switches – Enable or
disable writing of data into memory .
Transport aid – the cap or the body
often contains a hole suitable for
connection to a key chain or lanyard.
Connecting the cap , rather than the
body , can allow the drive itself to be
lost .
Size and style of
packaging
Some manufacturers differentiate
their products by using elaborate
housings , which are often bulky and
make the drive difficult to
connect to the USB port .
Such devices may only carry the USB
logo if sold with a separate
extension cable .
Heavy or bulky flash drive
packaging can make for unreliable
operation when plugged directly
into a USB port
Flash file system

Most flash drives ship preformatted

with the FAT or FAT 32 file system.
the drive can be reformatted to any
file system supported by the host
operating system .
standard FAT maintenance utilities ( e . g .
ScanDisk) can be used to repair or
retrieve corrupted data.
Hard Drive : Sectors are 512 bytes long ,
for compatibility with hard drives ,
and first sector can contain a
Master Boot Record and a
partition table. Therefore USB flash
units can be partitioned as hard
drives .
Longevity
Barring physical destruction of
the drive , the memory or USB
connector of a flash drive will
eventually fail .
SLC based memory is good for
around 100 , 000 writes ; more
commonly used MLC for around
10 , 000 .
The USB connector can withstand
approximately 1 , 500
connect / disconnect cycles .
Fake products
Fake USB flash drives are sometimes
sold , claiming to have higher
capacities than they actually have .
These are typically low capacity USB
drives which are modified so that they
emulate larger capacity drives ( e . g . a 2
GB drive being marketed as an 8 GB
drive ).
When plugged into a computer , they
report themselves as being the larger
capacity they were sold as , but when
data is written to them , either the
write fails , the drive freezes up , or it
overwrites existing data .
In some cases it is possible to repair
these devices to remove the false
capacity information and use them
 Uses
Personal data transport
Secure storage of data, application and software
files
System administration
Application carriers
Computer forensics and law enforcement
Booting operating systems
Windows Vista and Windows 7 ReadyBoost
Audio players
Music storage and marketing
Brand and product promotion
Backup
l
Advantages
Data stored on flash drives is impervious to
scratches and dust , and flash drives are
mechanically very robust making them
suitable for transporting data from place to
place and keeping it readily at hand .
Flash drives also store data densely compared
to many removable media . In mid - 2009 , 256 GB
drives became available , with the ability to
hold many times more data than a DVD or even
a Blu- ray disc.
Compared to hard drives , flash drives use
little power , have no fragile moving parts ,
and for most capacities are small and light .
Flash drives implement the USB mass storage
device class so that most modern
operating systems can read and write to them
without installing device drivers.
Disadvantages
Like all flash memory devices , flash
drives can sustain only a limited
number of write and erase cycles before
the drive fails . This should be a
consideration when using a flash drive
to run application software or an
operating system .
Most USB flash drives do not include a
write - protect mechanism , although some
have a switch on the housing of the
drive itself to keep the host computer
from writing or modifying data on the
drive .
A drawback to the small size is that
they are easily misplaced , left behind ,
or otherwise lost . This is a particular
problem if the data they contain are
 Comparison with other portable
storage
Tape
Floppy disk
Optical media
Flash memory cards
External hard disk
Obsolete devices



Tape
The applications of current
data tape cartridges hardly
overlap those of flash drives :
cost per gigabyte is very low , the
drives and media are expensive ,
have very high capacity and very
fast transfer speeds , and store
data sequentially.
While disk - based backup is the
primary medium of choice for most
companies , tape backup is still
popular for taking data off - site
Floppy disk
Floppy disk drives are rarely
fitted to modern computers and
are obsolete for normal purposes ,
although internal and external
drives can be fitted if required .
Floppy disks may be the method of
choice for transferring data to
and from very old computers
without USB or booting from
floppy disks , and so they are
sometimes used to change the
firmware on , for example , BIOS
chips .
Optical media

CD - R , DVD - R , and DVD + R can be

written to only once , RW varieties
up to about 1 , 000 erase / write
cycles , while modern NAND - based
flash drives often last for 500 , 000
or more erase / write cycles .
Optical storage devices are among
the cheapest methods of mass data
storage after the hard drive .
They are slower than their flash -
based counterparts . Standard 12 cm
optical discs are larger than
flash drives and more subject to
damage .
Flash memory cards
Flash memory cards, e . g .
Secure Digital cards, are available
in various formats and capacities ,
and are used by many consumer
devices .
An additional advantage of memory
cards is that many consumer
devices ( e . g . digital cameras,
portable music players) cannot
make use of USB flash drives ( even
if the device has a USB port )
whereas the memory cards used by
the devices can be read by PCs
External hard disk
Particularly with the advent of USB ,
external hard disks have become
widely available and inexpensive .
External hard disk drives currently
cost less per gigabyte than flash
drives and are available in larger
capacities .
Hard disks also suffer from file
fragmentation which can reduce
access speed .
Obsolete devices

Audio tape cassettes and high - capacity

floppy disks ( e . g . Imation SuperDisk),
and other forms of drives with
removable magnetic media such as the
Iomega Zip and Jaz drives are now
largely obsolete and rarely used .
There are products in today's market
which will emulate these legacy drives
for both tape & disk ( SCSI1 / SCSI2 ,
SASI , Magneto optic , Ricoh ZIP , Jaz ,
IBM3590 / Fujitsu 3490E and Bernoulli
for example ) in state of the art
Compact Flash storage devices -
CF2SCSI .
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